Thread: Home made jig for flattening slabs

Do you also have a Triton work centre if the slab will fit through it it can be done need two people in feed and out feed table.

There is one setup I saw here on the forum when I first started but havent link sorry

Here's mine https://www.woodworkforums.com/f88/router-mill-35655/ and it uses any big router.

It probably more complicated than it needs to be and limited to about 750 x 1200 mm but these can be made as big as you need.

Hey Steck,

Mate this is dead easy to make, probably easer to make than explain.

Have a look at this thread I posted a couple years ago.

https://www.woodworkforums.com/f40/milling-router-49176/

steve

Scooter made one aways back from an aluminium ladder which I videoed at the end-of-year Forums BBQ at his place. I'd point you to the Forum video collection, but they seem to have vanished??

In the meantime I now have a (non-homemade) solution - the Torque Workcentre, so I can now surface up to 2000x1200 slabs. Now I just have to find a slab that big to try it out!

Originally Posted by Stuart

Scooter made one aways back from an aluminium ladder which I videoed at the end-of-year Forums BBQ at his place. I'd point you to the Forum video collection, but they seem to have vanished??

In the meantime I now have a (non-homemade) solution - the Torque Workcentre, so I can now surface up to 2000x1200 slabs. Now I just have to find a slab that big to try it out!

They are now located in the WWF Library

Woodwork Forums Videos

And if you want a slab to test the limits of your new toy, I should be able to scrounge up something

Ah - cool! Tried finding it the old way (through the main forum directory aka Wood Forums front page!)

And you know me - timber addict (no wait - I meant tool addict, but you need to use them on something!!) Be good to give the slab capability of the Torque a serious workout When you have some time, let me know, come around and give it a workout.

That Torque Centre of yours sounds like a heavy duty machine! Can you post a picture of it?
My slabs are much more modest - some 1.8m X .8m blackwood. I have 3 of them.
I have a Triton 2400w router and I reckon it is too heavy and scary to use handheld.
A big thank you to everyone who replied - I appreciate your suggestions and help.
I am thinking of something like this set up:

It is a significant machine- a number of articles are on Stu's Shed already, with plenty more to come, especially as I start putting it through its paces



This is a photo taken during the build - still needs the MDF bed added, and of course the router mounted (and the obligatory slab!)

Originally Posted by steck

That Torque Centre of yours sounds like a heavy duty machine! Can you post a picture of it?
My slabs are much more modest - some 1.8m X .8m blackwood. I have 3 of them.
I have a Triton 2400w router and I reckon it is too heavy and scary to use handheld.
A big thank you to everyone who replied - I appreciate your suggestions and help.
I am thinking of something like this set up:

I've made and used successfully various version of Stecks effort over the years. Perhaps a little more sophisticated where the router can be moved along the cross frame independently. The whole affair needs to be absolutely rigid as does the securing of the slab to the sub frame. Either way get yourself a couple of good winding sticks and take off 90% of the waste with a hand held electric planer to start with. This saves an infinity of time and wear on router cutters. I now am fortunate to know two folk who each own slabmaster machines so for the price of a few bottles of indifferent red I find i go there to do the job effectively and quickly. The next step is to take the nicely flattened slab to a joinery works with a 1200mm wide belt sander plus some more bottles of red to oil the process. Then you can get to work making fine furniture rather than buggering about lugging huge bits of timber around. Anyway that's what I think now I'm 65 but I don't remember thinking that way when i was 25.

Yeah, there are designs like the one you posted Steck for flattening bench tops that I've come across on the web.

And there are also foreplanes and smoothers of course ;-}

For those it would help to be 25 as Old Pete said.

Ticky's system is good and simple. I don't use a router for flat surface work, but that's just my preference. I prefer to hand plane them. Where I have used the twin rail system shown by Ticky is when I had a boat rudder to make which required an airfoil section. The twin rails were made to the same profile as the section needed and it was easy. In general variations of the twin rail concept can be adapted to a few routing problems.

Jerry

More ideas here: click

I haven't used a real plane for many years now! But I do use my little blocking plane a bit.
I do have my fathers old rusty jack plane but it needs a bit of work on it. It was found under his work bench after many years of being missing.
I was wondering if any of you know how much commercial places charge to flatten and sand a slab? I am guessing it's not cheap!

Hi Steck,

You need to count the value not the cost for this sort of work. I'm 65 and I can flatten a slab with a No. 7 as well as any: I just haven't got the years left to waste on such indulgence. The charge for slab flattening over here in Tassie is about $60 per hour and you can do a pretty big slab to +/- 0.5mm thickness all over in that time if you have taken the bulk of the waste off in a few minutes with a hand held electric planer first. Joinery works with 1200 mm wide belt sanders are now 10 a penny. The normal charge over here is $50 per hour probably with a minimum of $50. Don't go the whole route through to the fine grits. If you have done a good job on the flattening then get them to start with 100 grit and then maybe do 120 then take it home and finish it by hand preferably with a large sanding float down to 240. Don't jump any grits and don't sand down into any defects to eliminate them. My own technique for final sanding is to mark the whole slab or board surface lightly with a 2B pencil at about 50mm intervals right across. I sand this all off with the sanding float then I do it again. Then I go to the next grit and I do it again etc etc. Sometimes I use a card scraper for the whole surface but still use the soft pencil technique. There's one cardinal rule to guide us ; if you can see a defect in the final sanded surface then it's going to look a hell of a lot worse once you have polished the surface: believe me, I too used to hope for the converse.
Old Pete